An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: A network of air monitors installed in Northern California has provided scientists with some of the first measurable evidence quantifying how much electric vehicles are shrinking the carbon footprint of a large urban area. Researchers from UC Berkeley set up dozens of sensors across the Bay Area to monitor planet-warming carbon dioxide, the super-abundant greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuels are burned. Between 2018 and 2022, the region's carbon emissions fell by 1.8% each year, which the Berkeley researchers concluded was almost exclusively owed to drivers switching to electric vehicles, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

In that time, Californians purchased about 719,500 zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicles, more than triple the amount compared to the previous five years, according to the California Department of Energy. The Bay Area also had a higher rate of electric vehicle adoption than the state as a whole.

While the findings confirm the state's transition to zero-emission vehicles is substantially lowering carbon emissions, it also reveals these reductions are still not on pace to meet the state's ambitious climate goals. Emissions need to be cut by around 3.7% annually, or nearly twice the rate observed by the monitors, according to Ronald Cohen, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry. Although cars and trucks are the state's largest source of carbon emissions, it underscores the need to deploy zero-emission technology inside homes and for the power grid.

"I think what we see right now is evidence of strong success in the transportation sector," Cohen said. "We're going to need equally strong success in home and commercial heating, and in the [industrial] sources. We don't yet see significant movement in those, but policy pushing on those is not as far ahead as policy on electric vehicles." Although cities only cover roughly 3% of global surface area, they produce about 70% of carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, nonprofit news site Canary Media reports that an old gas combustion plant is being replaced by a "power bank" named Nova.

It's expected to store "more electricity than all but one battery plant currently operating in the U.S." The billion-dollar project, with 680 megawatts and 2,720 megawatt-hours, will help California shift its nation-leading solar generation into the critical evening and nighttime hours, bolstering the grid against the heat waves that have pushed it to the brink multiple times in recent years... The town of Menifee gets to move on from the power plant exhaust that used to join the smog flowing from Los Angeles... And the grid gets a bunch more clean capacity that can, ideally, displace fossil fuels...

Moreover, [the power bank] represents Calpine's grand arrival in the energy storage market, after years operating one of the biggest independent gas power plant fleets in the country alongside Vistra and NRG... Federal analysts predict 2024 will be the biggest-ever year for grid battery installations across the U.S., and they highlighted Calpine's project as one of the single largest projects. The 620 megawatts the company plans to energize this year represent more than 4% of the industry's total expected new additions.

Many of these new grid batteries will be built in California, which needs all the dispatchable power it can get to meet demand when its massive solar fleet stops producing, and to keep pace with the electrification of vehicles and buildings. The Menifee Power Bank, and the other gigawatts worth of storage expected to come online in the state this year, will deliver much-needed reinforcement.
The company says it's planning "a portfolio" of 2,000 megawatts of California battery capacity.

But even this 680-megawatt project consists of 1,096 total battery containers holding 26,304 battery modules (or a total of 3 million cells), "all manufactured by Chinese battery powerhouse BYD, according to Robert Stuart, an electrical project manager with Calpine. That's enough electricity to supply 680,000 homes for four hours before it runs out." What's remarkable is just how quickly the project came together. Construction began last August, and is expected to hit 510 megawatts of fully operational capacity over the course of this summer, even as installation continues on other parts of the plant. Erecting a conventional gas plant of comparable scale would have taken three or four years of construction labor, due to the complexity of the systems and the many different trades required for it, Stuart told Canary Media... That speed and flexibility makes batteries a crucial solution as utilities across the nation grapple with a spike in expected electricity demand unlike anything seen in the last few decades.
The article notes a 2013 Caifornia policy mandating battery storage for its utility companies, which "kicked off a decade-long project to will an energy storage market into existence through methodical policies and regulations, and the knock-on effects of building the nation's foremost solar fleet." Those energy storage policies succeeded in jumpstarting the modern grid battery market: California leads the nation with more than 7 gigawatts of batteries installed as of last year (though Texas is poised to overtake California in battery installations this year, on the back of no particular policy effort but a general openness to building energy projects)... California's interlocking climate regulations effectively rule out new gas construction. The state's energy roadmap instead calls for massive expansion of battery capacity to shift the ample amounts of solar generation into the evening peaks.
"These trends, along with the falling price of batteries and maturing business model for storage, nudged Calpine to get into the battery business, too."

A business columnist at the Los Angeles Times notes Sam Bankman-Fried's judge issued another ruling "that may have a more far-reaching effect on the crypto business.

U.S. Judge Failla "cleared the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its lawsuit alleging that the giant crypto broker and exchange Coinbase has been dealing in securities without a license." What's important about Failla's ruling is that she dismissed out of hand Coinbase's argument, which is that cryptocurrencies are novel assets that don't fall within the SEC's jurisdiction — in short, they're not "securities." Crypto promoters have been making the same argument in court and the halls of Congress, where they're urging that the lawmakers craft an entirely new regulatory structure for crypto — preferably one less rigorous than the existing rules and regulations promulgated by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission...

Failla saw through that argument without breaking a sweat. "The 'crypto' nomenclature may be of recent vintage," she wrote, "but the challenged transactions fall comfortably within the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly eighty years...." Since Congress hasn't enacted regulations specifically aimed at crypto, Coinbase said, the SEC's lawsuit should be dismissed. The judge's opinion of that argument was withering. "While certainly sizable and important," she wrote, "the cryptocurrency industry 'falls far short of being a "portion of the American economy" bearing vast economic and political significance....'"

Failla's ruling followed another in New York federal court in which a judge deemed crypto to be securities. In that case, Judge Edgardo Ramos refused to dismiss SEC charges against Gemini Trust Co., a crypto trading outfit run by Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, and the crypto lender Genesis Global Capital. The SEC charged that a scheme in which Gemini pooled customers' crypto assets and lent them to Genesis while promising the customers high interest returns is an unregistered security. The SEC case, like that against Coinbase, will proceed....

The hangover from March continued into this month. On April 5, a federal jury in New York found Terraform Labs and its chief executive and major shareholder, Do Kwon, liable in what the SEC termed "a massive crypto fraud...." The value of UST fell in effect to zero, the SEC said, "wiping out over $40 billion of total market value ... and sending shock waves through the crypto asset community."

Movie exhibitors still face "serious risks," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday: Attendance was on the decline even before the pandemic shuttered theaters, thanks to changing consumer habits and competition for people's time and money from other entertainment options. The industry has demonstrated an over-reliance on Imax-friendly studio action tent poles, when theater chains need a deep and diverse roster of movies in order to thrive... It remains to be seen whether the global box office will ever get back to the $40 billion-plus days of 2019 and earlier years. A clearer picture will emerge in 2025 when the writers' and actors' strikes are further in the past. But overall, there's a strong case that moviegoing has proved to be relatively sturdy despite persistent difficulties.
Which brings us to this year's CinemaCon convention, where multiplex operators heard from Hollywood studios teasing upcoming blockbusters like Joker: Folie à Deux, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Transformers One, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Exhibitors pleaded with the major studios to release more films of varying budgets on the big screen, while studios made the case that their upcoming slates are robust enough to keep them in business... Box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada is expected to total about $8.5 billion, which is down from $9 billion in 2023 and a far cry from the pre-pandemic yearly tallies that nearly reached $12 billion... Though a fuller release schedule is expected for 2025, talk of budget cuts, greater industry consolidation and corporate mergers has forced exhibitors to prepare for the possibility of a near future with fewer studios making fewer movies....

As the domestic film business has been thrown into turmoil in recent years, Japanese cinema and faith-based content have been two of movie theaters' saving graces. Industry leaders kicked off CinemaCon on Tuesday by singing the praises of Sony-owned anime distributor Crunchyroll's hits — including the latest "Demon Slayer" installment. Mitchel Berger, senior vice president of global commerce at Crunchyroll, said Tuesday that the global anime business generated $14 billion a decade ago and is projected to generate $37 billion next year. "Anime is red hot right now," Berger said. "Fans have known about it for years, but now everyone else is catching up and recognizing that it's a cultural, economic force to be reckoned with.... " Another type of product buoying the exhibition industry right now is faith-based programming, shepherded in large part by "Sound of Freedom" distributor Angel Studios...

Theater owners urged studio executives at CinemaCon to put more films in theaters — and not just big-budget tent poles timed for summer movie season and holiday weekends... "Whenever we have a [blockbuster] film — whether it be 'Barbie' or 'Super Mario' ... records are set," added Bill Barstow, co-founder of ACX Cinemas in Nebraska. "But we just don't have enough of them."

In the view of Jim VandeHei, CEO of Axios, artificial intelligence will eviscerate the weak, the ordinary, the unprepared in media," reports the New York Times: VandeHei says the only way for media companies to survive is to focus on delivering journalistic expertise, trusted content and in-person human connection. For Axios, that translates into more live events, a membership program centered on its star journalists and an expansion of its high-end subscription newsletters. "We're in the middle of a very fundamental shift in how people relate to news and information," he said, "as profound, if not more profound, than moving from print to digital." "Fast forward five to 10 years from now and we're living in this AI-dominated virtual world — who are the couple of players in the media space offering smart, sane content who are thriving?" he added. "It damn well better be us."

Axios is pouring investment into holding more events, both around the world and in the United States. VandeHei said the events portion of his business grew 60% year over year in 2023. The company has also introduced a $1,000-a-year membership program around some of its journalists that will offer exclusive reporting, events and networking. The first one, announced last month, is focused on Eleanor Hawkins, who writes a weekly newsletter for communications professionals. Her newsletter will remain free, but paying subscribers will have access to additional news and data, as well as quarterly calls with Hawkins... Axios will expand Axios Pro, its collection of eight high-end subscription newsletters focused on specific niches in the deals and policy world. The subscriptions start at $599 a year each, and Axios is looking to add one on defense policy...

"The premium for people who can tell you things you do not know will only grow in importance, and no machine will do that," VandeHei said....VandeHei said that although he thought publications should be compensated for original intellectual property, "that's not a make-or-break topic." He said Axios had talked to several AI companies about potential deals, but "nothing that's imminent.... One of the big mistakes a lot of media companies made over the last 15 years was worrying too much about how do we get paid by other platforms that are eating our lunch as opposed to figuring out how do we eat people's lunch by having a superior product," he said.
"VandeHei said Axios was not currently profitable because of the investment in the new businesses," according to the article.

But "The company has continued to hire journalists even as many other news organizations have cut back."

Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and Arm are among Canonical's "silicon partners," a program that "ensures maximum Ubuntu compatibility and long-term support with certified hardware," according to Web Pro News.

And now Qualcomm is set to be Canonical's next silicon partner, "giving Qualcomm access to optimized versions of Ubuntu for its processors." Companies looking to use Ubuntu on Qualcomm chips will benefit from an OS that provides 10 years of support and security updates.

The collaboration is expected to be a boon for AI, edge computing, and IoT applications. "The combination of Qualcomm Technologies' processors with the popularity of Ubuntu among AI and IoT developers is a game changer for the industry," commented Dev Singh, Vice President, Business Development and Head of Building, Enterprise & Industrial Automation, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc...
"Optimised Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core images will be available for Qualcomm SoCs," according to the announcement, "enabling enterprises to meet their regulatory, compliance and security demands for AI at the edge and the broader IoT market with a secure operating system that is supported for 10 years." Qualcomm Technologies chose to partner with Canonical to create an optimised Ubuntu for Qualcomm IoT chipsets, giving developers an easy path to create safe, compliant, security-focused, and high-performing applications for multiple industries including industrial, robotics and edge automation...

Developers and enterprises can benefit from the Ubuntu Certified Hardware program, which features a growing list of certified ODM boards and devices based on Qualcomm SoCs. These certified devices deliver an optimised Ubuntu experience out-of-the-box, enabling developers to focus on developing applications and bringing products to market.

The Linux Foundation-backed project OpenTofu "has gotten legal pushback from HashiCorp," according to a report — just seven months after forking OpenTofu's code from HashiCorp's IT deployment software Terraform: On April 3, HashiCorp issued a strongly-worded Cease and Desist letter to OpenTofu, accusing that the project has "repeatedly taken code HashiCorp provided only under the Business Software License (BSL) and used it in a manner that violates those license terms and HashiCorp's intellectual property rights." It goes on to note that "In at least some instances, OpenTofu has incorrectly re-labeled HashiCorp's code to make it appear as if it was made available by HashiCorp originally under a different license." Last August, HashiCorp announced that it would be transitioning its software from the open source Mozilla Public License (MPL 2.0) to the Business Source License (BSL), a license that permits the source to be viewed, but not run in production environments without explicit approval by the license owner. HashiCorp gave OpenTofu until April 10 to remove any allegedly copied code from the OpenTofu repository, threatening litigation if the project fails to do so.
Others are also covering the fracas, including Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at DevOps.com: OpenTofu replied, "The OpenTofu team vehemently disagrees with any suggestion that it misappropriated, mis-sourced, or otherwise misused HashiCorp's BSL code. All such statements have zero basis in facts." In addition, it said, HashiCorp's claims of copyright infringement are completely unsubstantiated. As for the code in question, OpenTofu claims it can clearly be shown to have been copied from older code under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0. "HashiCorp seems to have copied the same code itself when they implemented their version of this feature. All of this is easily visible in our detailed SCO analysis, as well as their own comments."

In a detailed source code origination (SCO) examination of the problematic source code, OpenTofu stated that HashiCorp was mistaken. "We believe that this is just a case of a misunderstanding where the code came from." OpenTofu maintains the code was originally licensed under the MPL, not the BSL. If so, then OpenTofu was perfectly within its right to use the code in its codebase...

[OpenTofu's lawyer] concluded, "In the future, if you should have any concerns or questions about how source code in OpenTofu is developed, we would ask that you contact us first. Immediately issuing DMCA takedown notices and igniting salacious negative press articles is not the most helpful path to resolving concerns like this."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Influential US Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has called on U.S. President Joe Biden to ban electric vehicles from Chinese brands. Brown calls Chinese EVs "an existential threat" to the U.S. automotive industry and says that allowing imports of cheap EVs from Chinese brands "is inconsistent with a pro-worker industrial policy." Brown's letter to the president (PDF) is the most recent to sound alarms about the threat of heavily subsidized Chinese EVs moving into established markets. Brands like BYD and MG have been on sale in the European Union for some years now, and last October, the EU launched an anti-subsidy investigation into whether the Chinese government is giving Chinese brands an unfair advantage.

The EU probe won't wrap until November, but another report published this week found that government subsidies for green technology companies are prevalent in China. BYD, which now sells more EVs than Tesla, has benefited from almost $4 billion (3.7 billion euro) in direct help from the Chinese government in 2022, according to a study by the Kiel Institute. Last month, the EU even started paying extra attention to imports of Chinese EVs, issuing a threat of retroactive tariffs that could start being imposed this summer. Chinese EV imports to the EU have increased by 14 percent since the start of its investigation, but they have yet to really begin in the U.S., where there are a few barriers in their way. Chinese batteries make an EV ineligible for the IRS's clean vehicle tax credit, for one thing. And Chinese-made vehicles (like the Lincoln Nautilus, Buick Envision, and Polestar 2) are already subject to a 27.5 percent import tax.

But Chinese EVs are on sale in Mexico already, and that has American automakers worried. Last year, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he saw Chinese automakers "as the main competitors, not GM or Toyota." And in January, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he believed that "if there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world." [...] It's not just the potential damage to the U.S. auto industry that has prompted this letter. Brown wrote that he is concerned about the risk of China having access to data collected by connected cars, "whether it be information about traffic patterns, critical infrastructure, or the lives of Americans," pointing out that "China does not allow American-made electric vehicles near their official buildings." At the end of February, the Commerce Department also warned of the security risk from Chinese-connected cars and revealed it has launched an investigation into the matter. "When the goal is to dominate a sector, tariffs are insufficient to stop their attack on American manufacturing," Brown wrote. "Instead, the Administration should act now to ban Chinese EVs before they destroy the potential for the U.S. EV market. For this reason, no solution should be left off the table, including the use of Section 421 (China Safeguard) of the Trade Act of 1974, or some other authority."

Calpine's billion-dolllar Nova Power Bank near Los Angeles will be among the largest in the world when it comes online later this year. According to Reuters, the plant is built on the site of a failed gas-fired power plant and "will be able to power about 680,000 homes for up to four hours when charged." From the report: The 680-megawatt lithium-ion battery bank is big even for California, which boasts about 55% of the nation's power storage capacity, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Calpine will bring online 620 MW of the bank in two phases this year starting in the summer and open the remaining 60 MW in 2025. [...] Calpine, best known in the state for its fleet of gas plants, has about 2,000 MW of battery capacity under development. California was a pioneer in mandating that its utilities begin procuring energy storage more than a decade ago. The state is expected to need about 50 gigawatts of battery storage to meet its 2045 goal of getting all of its power from carbon-free sources, up from about 7 GW today.

AmiMoJo writes: Huawei Technologies is building a massive semiconductor equipment research and development center in Shanghai as the Chinese tech titan continues to beef up its chip supply chain to counter a U.S. crackdown. The centre's mission includes building lithography machines, vital equipment for producing cutting-edge chips. To staff the new center, Huawei is offering salary packages worth up to twice as much as local chipmakers, industry executives and sources briefed on the matter told Nikkei Asia. The company has already hired numerous engineers who have worked with top global chip tool builders like Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA and ASML, they said, adding that chip industry veterans with more than 15 years of experience at leading chipmakers like TSMC, Intel and Micron are also among recent and potential hires. The report says Huawei is investing about 12 billion yuan ($1.66 billion) for this R&D chip plant, making it one of Shanghai's top projects for 2024.

Working for the company is no easy task, says one chip engineering: "Working with them is brutal. It's not 996 -- meaning working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. ... It will literally be 007 -- from midnight to midnight, seven days a week. No days off at all. The contract will be for three years, [but] the majority of people can't survive till renewal."

Datacenter power issues in Ireland may be coming to a head amid reports from customers that Amazon is restricting resources users can spin up in that nation, even directing them to other AWS regions across Europe instead. From a report: Energy consumed by datacenters is a growing concern, especially in places such as Ireland where there are clusters of facilities around Dublin that already account for a significant share of the country's energy supply. This may be leading to restrictions on how much infrastructure can be used, given the power requirements. AWS users have informed The Register that there are sometimes limits on the resources that they can access in its Ireland bit barn, home to Amazon's eu-west-1 region, especially with power-hungry instances that make use of GPUs to accelerate workloads such as AI.

"You cannot spin up GPU nodes in AWS Dublin as those locations are maxed out power-wise. There is reserved capacity for EC2 just in case," one source told us. "If you have a problem with that, AWS Europe will point you at spare capacity in Sweden and other parts of the EU." We asked AWS about these issues, but when it finally responded the company was somewhat evasive. "Ireland remains core to our global infrastructure strategy, and we will continue to work with customers to understand their needs, and help them to scale and grow their business," a spokesperson told us. Ireland's power grid operator, EirGrid, was likewise less than direct when we asked if they were limiting the amount of power datacenters could consume.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Following moves of other tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, Apple is reportedly set to open a new office space in a Miami suburb. This won't be the first corporate space for Apple in the city, but it will be larger than the existing office. Reported by Bloomberg, anonymous sources close to the matter say that Apple's new Miami office will be 45,000 square feet in the affluent Coral Gables suburb of Miami. It's not clear yet what part of Apple's business the new office will focus on but it will be larger than its existing small Miami office that handles Latin America and advertising operations. The specific property of the new Apple offices will be at The Plaza Coral Gables.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said today it is investigating a breach at business intelligence company Sisense, whose products are designed to allow companies to view the status of multiple third-party online services in a single dashboard. CISA urged all Sisense customers to reset any credentials and secrets that may have been shared with the company, which is the same advice Sisense gave to its customers Wednesday evening. New York City based Sisense has more than 1,000 customers across a range of industry verticals, including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and higher education. On April 10, Sisense Chief Information Security Officer Sangram Dash told customers the company had been made aware of reports that "certain Sisense company information may have been made available on what we have been advised is a restricted access server (not generally available on the internet.)" In its alert, CISA said it was working with private industry partners to respond to a recent compromise discovered by independent security researchers involving Sisense.

Sisense declined to comment when asked about the veracity of information shared by two trusted sources with close knowledge of the breach investigation. Those sources said the breach appears to have started when the attackers somehow gained access to the company's code repository at Gitlab, and that in that repository was a token or credential that gave the bad guys access to Sisense's Amazon S3 buckets in the cloud. Both sources said the attackers used the S3 access to copy and exfiltrate several terabytes worth of Sisense customer data, which apparently included millions of access tokens, email account passwords, and even SSL certificates.

The incident raises questions about whether Sisense was doing enough to protect sensitive data entrusted to it by customers, such as whether the massive volume of stolen customer data was ever encrypted while at rest in these Amazon cloud servers. It is clear, however, that unknown attackers now have all of the credentials that Sisense customers used in their dashboards. The breach also makes clear that Sisense is somewhat limited in the clean-up actions that it can take on behalf of customers, because access tokens are essentially text files on your computer that allow you to stay logged in for extended periods of time -- sometimes indefinitely. And depending on which service we're talking about, it may be possible for attackers to re-use those access tokens to authenticate as the victim without ever having to present valid credentials. Beyond that, it is largely up to Sisense customers to decide if and when they change passwords to the various third-party services that they've previously entrusted to Sisense. "If they are hosting customer data on a third-party system like Amazon, it better damn well be encrypted," said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at University of California, Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) and lecturer at UC Davis. "If they are telling people to rest credentials, that means it was not encrypted. So mistake number one is leaving Amazon credentials in your Git archive. Mistake number two is using S3 without using encryption on top of it. The former is bad but forgivable, but the latter given their business is unforgivable."

Apple, aiming to boost sluggish computer sales, is preparing to overhaul its entire Mac line with a new family of in-house processors designed to highlight AI. Bloomberg News: The company, which released its first Macs with M3 chips five months ago, is already nearing production of the next generation -- the M4 processor -- according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new chip will come in at least three main varieties, and Apple is looking to update every Mac model with it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been announced.

The new Macs are underway at a critical time. After peaking in 2022, Mac sales fell 27% in the last fiscal year, which ended in September. In the holiday period, revenue from the computer line was flat. Apple attempted to breathe new life into the Mac business with an M3-focused launch event last October, but those chips didn't bring major performance improvements over the M2 from the prior year. Apple also is playing catch-up in AI, where it's seen as a laggard to Microsoft, Alphabet's Google and other tech peers. The new chips are part of a broader push to weave AI capabilities into all its products. Apple is aiming to release the updated computers beginning late this year and extending into early next year.

Amazon on Thursday added Andrew Ng, the computer scientist who led AI projects at Alphabet's Google and China's Baidu, to its board amid rising competition among Big Techs to add users for their GenAI products. From a report: Amazon's cloud unit is facing pressure from Microsoft's early pact with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and integration of its technology into Azure, while Alexa voice assistant is in race with genAI chat tools from OpenAI and Google.

The appointment, effective April 9, also follows job cuts across Amazon, which has seen enterprise cloud spending and e-commerce sales moderate due to macroeconomic factors such as inflation and high interest rates. "As we look toward 2024 (and beyond), we're not done lowering our cost to serve," CEO Andy Jassy said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday.

Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told Yahoo Finance it plans to go public within the next 18 months at a valuation of $5.3 billion. Since being spun out of defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation in 2021, the company has "placed its bets on building out the growing space economy, from developing rocket propulsion technology to a commercial space station with Blue Origin." From the report: Its ambitions have fueled the development of its cargo space plane, the Dream Chaser, set to have its inaugural mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in the second half of this year. Built to land on any commercial runway, the plane will lower the barrier to entry into low-earth orbit and open up business opportunities, Vice said. "Since the 1960s, every science experiment or human being that's come back to earth from space, even today, is still landing in a capsule in the ocean," he said. "We think changing and revolutionizing the way that we bring things back from space, both humans and cargo, and landing [the spacecraft] back at a commercial runway will completely accelerate the new space economy."

"We believe that the next big breakthrough products in oncology, longevity, and industrialized components like glass will be produced in low Earth orbit," Vice said, noting that many of those opportunities are likely to come from the development of commercial space stations to replace the decades-old ISS. Sierra Space has partnered with Blue Origin to build out the Orbital Reef, a commercially owned and operated space station, though recent reports have hinted at tension between the corporate partners. "We're transitioning from decades of government-run space stations with just a handful of government-trained astronauts to the full commercialization of low Earth orbit," Vice said. "We think that's going to create, we believe, probably the most profound industrial revolution and grow that space economy well over a trillion dollars by 2040."

Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian, with the caption: "The UK is hyperventilating about stories of shoplifting; though standing outside a shop and watching as a guy calmly gets off his bike, parks it, walks in and walks out with a pack of beer and cycles off -- and then seeing staff members rushing out -- was striking. So now it's throwing technical solutions at the problem..." From the report: The government is investing more than 55 million pounds in expanding facial recognition systems -- including vans that will scan crowded high streets -- as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting. The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offense of assaulting a retail worker.

The new law, under which perpetrators could be sent to prison for up to six months and receive unlimited fines, will be introduced via an amendment to the criminal justice bill that is working its way through parliament. The change could happen as early as the summer. The government said it would invest 55.5 million pounds over the next four years. The plan includes 4 million pounds for mobile units that can be deployed on high streets using live facial recognition in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police -- including repeat shoplifters. "This Orwellian tech has no place in Britain," said Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties at campaign group Big Brother Watch. "Criminals should be brought to justice, but papering over the cracks of broken policing with Orwellian tech is not the solution. It is completely absurd to inflict mass surveillance on the general public under the premise of fighting theft while police are failing to even turn up to 40% of violent shoplifting incidents or to properly investigate many more serious crimes."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's getting to be a bit much. Auto insurance prices have surged over the last couple years. March consumer inflation out Wednesday shows them up 22% compared to last year. Since the end of 2019 -- just before Covid hit -- they're up 45%.

Why? That's where things get complicated. In a prophylactic press release released Wednesday morning, an insurance industry trade group cited "greatly increased the cost of repairing and replacing cars" due to inflation. As anyone who has shopped for a new or used car over the last couple years can tell you, costs have gone up. That goes for the costs of replacing minor parts like bumpers or mirrors as well.

Insurers lost a lot of money on those replacement costs in 2021 and 2022, and are now trying to make that money back by raising rates a lot. Then there's also the the objectively atrocious driving record of Americans. Even before the pandemic, Americans were awful drivers compared to other high income countries, with auto death rates the highest among peer nations. High accident rates are reflected in higher costs of insurance. And of course there's also the old-fashioned profit motive. Insurers are trying to make money and raising rates is the way to do it.

Vinod Khosla, the founder of venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, opines on the bill that seeks to ban TikTok or force its parent firm to divest the U.S. business: Even if one could argue that this bill strikes at the First Amendment, there is legal precedent for doing so. In 1981, Haig vs Agee established that there are circumstances under which the government can lawfully impinge upon an individual's First Amendment rights if it is necessary to protect national security and prevent substantial harm. TikTok and the AI that can be channelled through it are national and homeland security issues that meet these standards.

Should this bill turn into law, the president would have the power to force any foreign-owned social media to be sold if US intelligence agencies deem them a national security threat. This broader scope should protect against challenges that this is a bill of attainder. Similar language helped protect effective bans on Huawei and Kaspersky Lab. As for TikTok's value as a boon to consumers and businesses, there are many companies that could quickly replace it. In 2020, after India banned TikTok amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and New Delhi, services including Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, MX TakaTak, Chingari and others filled the void.Â

Few appreciate that TikTok is not available in China. Instead, Chinese consumers use Douyin, the sister app that features educational and patriotic videos, and is limited to 40 minutes per day of total usage. Spinach for Chinese kids, fentanyl -- another chief export of China's -- for ours. Worse still, TikTok is a programmable fentanyl whose effects are under the control of the CCP.

A brain implant startup called Synchron is preparing to recruit patients for a large-scale clinical trial to seek commercial approval for its device. Reuters reports: Synchron on Monday plans to launch an online registry for patients interested in joining the trial meant to include dozens of participants, and has received interest from about 120 clinical trial centers to help run the study, CEO Thomas Oxley said in an interview. "Part of this registry is to start to enable local physicians to speak to patients with motor impairment," he said. "There's a lot of interest so we don't want it to come in a big bottleneck right before the study we'll be doing."

Synchron received U.S. authorization for preliminary testing in July 2021 and has implanted its device in six patients. Prior testing in four patients in Australia showed no serious adverse side effects, the company has reported. Synchron will be analyzing the U.S. data to prepare for the larger study, while awaiting authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed, Oxley said. Synchron and the FDA declined to comment on the expected timing of that decision. The company aims to include patients who are paralyzed due to the neurodegenerative disease ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), stroke and multiple sclerosis, Oxley said. [...]

Synchron's device is delivered to the brain via the large vein that sits next to the motor cortex in the brain instead of being surgically implanted into the brain cortex like Neuralink's. The FDA has asked Synchron to screen stroke patients using a non-invasive test to determine whether they would respond to an implant, Oxley said. "They want to expand the market to people who have had a stroke severe enough to cause paralysis because if limited to quadriplegia, the market is way too small to be sustainable," Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said of Synchron. In 2020, Synchron reported that patients, opens new tab in its Australian study could use its first-generation device to type an average of 16 characters per minute. That's better than non-invasive devices that sit atop the head and record the electrical activity of the brain, which have helped people type up to eight characters per minute, but not the leap forward that is hoped for with an implant, Ludwig said. Oxley would not say whether typing has gotten faster or offer any other details from the ongoing U.S. trial. Reuters notes that Synchron's investors include billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. It's competing with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant startup and claims it's farther along in the process of testing its device.

Earlier this year, Neuralink said it implanted a chip in its first human patient. It later said the patient fully recovered and was able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts.